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Why Tuesday?

The Girlfriend's Guide to Health will be updated every Tuesday.... Stay tuned dear readers and let me rock your world.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

And on one day,,, she rested

Oh my girlfriends…. May I say that as I write this it is in
fact my day off and I find myself in bed? No, I am not unwell. No, there was no
sale on 8000 thread count sheets and no, I am not suffering the ill effects of
one too many cocktails. Truth be told- I had one Chinese margarita last night
at my favourite fusion bistro but ONE was my limit.

Please my sisters- don’t judge. Make no mistake- I have me a
new fitness goal of completing a Half Iron Man and I am training like a
motherfucker.

But something in this get up and go girl, just got up and
went. Here I am laying like broccoli in my 600 thread counts on a perfect Friday
morning. My schedule suggests I should be running and biking but my head
suggests I should lay here for another 6-8 hours and watch every episode of the
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. This of course is not appropriate triathlon
training behaviour but somehow my heart just won’t budge.

Well, my sisters… the heart wants what the heart wants.

This brings me to a rather new concept for me… THE REST DAY.

I am rather unfamiliar with the concept of rest day. And
yes, like every misstep of my personality…. I blame my mother.

Mama is a woman who can’t sit still. God love the little
energetic woman who gave me life but truly- I blame her for not being able to
rest for a given period of time.

Let’s be clear- my mama is a pretty amazing lady. She raised
two kids while working full time and she has a “no-nonsense” way of going about
things. To this day she is 72 years old and still walks on atreadmill every morning for an hour….
With a knee brace. The broad (and I say broad with the highest of honours) is
unstoppable.

Some of my best conversations with my mother were held with
her back to me. Yes, my sisters- she was doing the dishes and I was sitting at
the kitchen table doing my homework. Now as an adult- our best conversations
are held by telephone. She is on the other end of the line walking on a
treadmill and I am on my Bluetooth biking over the Lion’s Gate Bridge.

Yes, Mama taught me many a great things- chief among them
was that an object in motion stays in motion.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about my relative
inability to sit still. Sure there are the odd days where I do indeed lay like
broccoli but for the most part, I am a woman who does not like to take a load
off on a regular basis. Perhaps I’m afraid that once I sit down, I may never
get back up again, or perhaps it’s a clinical thing that I chose to ignore in
order to get things done.

Analyze all you like my sisters…. I will lay here and see
which housewife is the nastiest. Discuss amongst yourselves and get back to me.

And so I went looking for the scientific evidence to
determine if my days spent in motion could indeed be blamed on my mother.

A large scale trial published in the British Medical Journal
in 2007 showed a glimpse of such a link. The study looked at the correlation
between physical activity in kids and that of their parents.

A total of 11 952 children from the Avon longitudinal study
of parents and children were invited to participate in study clinics at age 11
years. Of these, 7159 (59.9%) attended the clinic and 6622 (92.5%) agreed to
wear an accelerometre.

An accelerometer is a device you wear that tells you how
active you are in a day.

Of the children who agreed to participate, 5595 (84.5%)
returned accelerometres.

The study showed that children who were born to physically active
parents and children who were born to mothers who were active during pregnancy
were significantly more active by age 11 than those were from sedentary families.

Others factors did not affect a child’s physical activity.
For example- when kids were born and how many siblings they had did not affect
physical activity.

Although this study does not really allow me to blame my
dear mother for my need to multitask at all times- it does give me some insight
into just how I get things done.

Our parents really do impart upon us a sense of certain
norms…. Whether we should play sports or whether we should work full time, work
out like a crazy person and the do paperwork while watching television…. All these
things may indeed be influenced by what our parents do.

And so another week begins and ends and I spent an entire
day in bed…. I did not shower, I did not move….. I did however, like a good
daughter, phone my mother. After all she may have gotten me into this mess in
the first place.

About Me

Dr. Ali Zentner received her undergraduate medical degree from McMaster University and completed her Internal Medicine Residency with an extra year of Cardiology training at the University of Calgary. Ali has been practicing Internal Medicine since 2001 as a specialist in Cardiac Risk Management and Obesity. Ali is the author of The Weight Loss Prescription, published by Penguin books in 2013. It is the ultimate guide for healthy living and one hell of a book (no bias here). Ali also wrote A Good Life, a work of fiction, published in 2003. The novel has been best described as “Sex in the City” meets “ER” and details one woman’s struggle to find meaning in a world not always under her control. Both books are available on amazon.com. A classic overachiever, Dr. Zentner has completed the Vancouver marathon, and half marathons in New York, Vancouver and Toronto. She is an avid swimmer, runner and cyclist training for her next triathlon and who exercises to keep fit and to justify her next fashion purchase. She lives in Vancouver with her husband who says nothing about the size of his wife’s shoe closet (if he knows what is good for him)…